Day 39

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The item in the picture is called a beaver slide. It's used for turning loose 
hay into hay stacks. 

The idea is that the forks (the posts running along the base of the 
table, currently in the storage position) flip out onto the ground. 
Hay is loaded on the forks with a buckrake (another specialized piece 
of ranch equipment). A truck or tractor pulls a cable that slides the 
forks and hay up the table, eventually dumping the hay over the top. 
When the height of the stack reaches the top of the table, the 
tractor drags the whole contraption back about 15', making the 
haystack longer when more hay is dropped in. 

There are usually pole "walls" that go along with the beaver slides. 
The walls hold the sides of the stack upright as is it being built. 
For some reason, the walls either rot much faster than the beaver 
slides or (more likely) were frequently scavenged for their parts.

Beaver slides aren't used much, if at all, these days because they're 
quite labor intensive and prone to break downs. Hay is either a) 
square baled into 100lb bales and picked up with mechanical bale 
wagons which automatically make the stacks, b) baled into 6'+ 
rectangular or round bales and stacked with a tractor, or c) loose 
stacked with a buckrake and tractor w/loader attachment.

In the '70s, a buckrake was most commonly a 50's vintage pickup truck 
that had been modified to drive backwards (flip the drive axle and 
turn all operator controls around 180 degrees). A 12-14 foot wide 
"basket" with 14' lodgepole pine fork tines was attached to the new 
front of the vehicle. Hydraulics would raise and lower the basket 
about one foot. The buckrake's job is to drive the fields, pick up 
hay from the windrows, and return it to the stacking area so the 
tractor could stack it.